This invention relates in general to microphone supports and in particular to a new and useful shock absorbing microphone support which is simple in design and economical to manfacture.
Various supports resilient in their effect have been known for mounting and shipping objects which are sensitive to shocks, in which the object is supported by springs, rubber cords or rubber bands. Particularly with microphone mounts, it is important to prevent any mechanical shocks or vibrations from passing through the support to the microphone since this would cause interfering noise. Therefore, a prior art design provides to suspend a microphone holding clamping device from springs which are unilaterally secured to a support of any shape. The clamping device for such a support represents some manufacturing expenses and has the additional disadvantage that the diameter of the tubular object to be supported may vary only within narrow limits.
Other prior art supports provide resilient mounting of tubular objects by means of rubber bands or cords suspended from forks. Bands have the disadvantage that they are substantially stiffer in the axial direction of the object to be supported than in the direction perpendicular thereto, so that shocks having a component in the longitudinal axis of the object are damped only insufficiently. With bands having a smaller cross section, better damping properties in the longitudinal axis are obtained. Round rubber cords allow a rolling motion upon an acceleration in the direction of the longitudinal axis of the object to be supported, which, if microphones are concerned, again causes a strong interfering noise and precludes any definite support. Finally, known are supports with unilateral elastic parallelograms which permit optimum adjustment of the damping only if they are suspended. In standing position, the soft parallelogram springs yield under the weight of the supported object and make a mechanically stable anchoring impossible. Supports in which a rod-shaped object is resiliently held in place by means of two diaphragms also belong to the prior art. One of their disadvantages is that the relatively large diaphragms are disturbing, both optically and acoustically.